


Twenty-Four

by Calyps0



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Not Sure Why I Wrote This, One-Shot, Self-Indulgent, but this show is addictive so whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23172427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calyps0/pseuds/Calyps0
Summary: I got a bunch of monkeys and typewriters in order to test a hypothesis. Expected Shakespeare, got this instead.Blame them, not me.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Martin Whitly
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	Twenty-Four

It is codependency as textbook as codependency gets, which is just the sort of thing his father would say— _has said, in fact_ —but textbooks do not make it easier to shrug off habits like warm blankets.

That first time—his curious _get on the bed_?—had been a question, a test, a lilt of a wander.

The second, a suggestion—soft, abashed, _let’s not make this a habit_ —

The third, fourth, fifth, sixth—

_Well._

There is no going back now, not from this. He savors the stretch of his lithe, pale torso, arching like curved Corinthian column-marble, the flip of his golden hair, straight and sweat-slicked. He thinks of what his father sees when he looks him full in the face: crystal eyes that always seem too wide, too blue, too lost—always falling away this edge of unearthly, rimmed always by the soot and ash of his dreams—or perhaps the lack thereof; the wide mouth; the purple-bruised bags—all combined create a visage of a man just coming unhinged, too far away from fear to recognize when it has consumed him whole.

 _But!—_ he says to himself even as his nightmares take form—he takes comfort in the fact that _I am not like those women—_

_You would never have locked me away._

_And as there were twenty-three, I will not become twenty-four._

Looking back on that fisheye-childhood, that dream-tinged wonder—the thunderstorm-safe rumble of a car wash, half-excitement-half-fear pounding of heartbeat and water against chest and windows; the pillow-soft sweetness of cocoa at the back of his throat, burning his tongue like fire-flame licks; the warrens of dirt and rabbits and trails he followed, emblazoned by footsteps written in what curiously looked like blood—

_No, that can’t be right._

And yet his father seems to have corrupted these memories, too.

But it doesn’t matter, not really. He can’t take comfort in them anymore, has grown gangly and starving out of them, like those pilled sweaters he had found solace in so long ago.

He can’t stand car washes now; the claustrophobia is too much for those limbs he never quite grew into. His days are less and less forest trails than they are office spaces, suits and pressed shirts, and he can no longer circumvent linen that is scratchy-stiff against his skin. And the cocoa—

Well, he has a harder and harder time keeping anything down these days, let along something so tooth-achingly sweet.

 _(But!)_ His father cannot corrupt anything more surface-level saccharine than the memories of a child. His present is safe. He cannot alter the truth of now, the sense that he alone is the one, he alone has divined the space between heartbeats, and he alone has braved the clutches of the beast to fold of his own free will into its loving arms.

 _And I am not afraid_ , he thinks, legs splayed, spine arched, ribcage convex against the cool air, _because I will never be your twenty-four._

_\---_

The pill bottles sit in charming candy-colored rows like lacquered ladybugs, fever-bright. He swallows them whole, a jumping frog, swirling like abacus beads in the remembered heights to which his imagination dared soar.

_(let’s not make this a habit)_

Six of the side effects are counterintuitive to the others. Lethargy combats insomnia, apathy wars against aggression.

And yet instead of evenness it seems only as if they are clashing against each other inside of him, sloshing around and skimming his organs disguised in pitched, potent platitudes of _make sure you take them before bed, make sure to drink water, eat before you swallow,_ my boy _, you look exhausted._

_(My boy, my boy, my boy—)_

And even as his innards roil and his skin breaks out in turns with sweat and shivers, he takes refuge in this as keenly as if it were a cool rainforest canopy, protecting him from a storm. He will never be a nameless woman folded over herself in a box, he will never bear the shame of a number, a helpless victim, because that’s the difference, _isn’t it?_

He always gives himself over willingly. 

_\---_

His father says, in moments like these when he is slumped, sated, in a curl of his own limbs and sweat and wonder, that his face is beautiful because it is never far from mania. He wonders about this between cooling sheets, tries to relax his muscles in a way that makes him seem more serene. His father catches this, tips his chin up with _no, my beautiful boy, no, no, no._

 _You let yourself go,_ he says, with something akin to wonder. _Those eyes—like bottled electricity._ He traces the wide mouth with reverent fingertips. _Mania only wants you because you lend yourself to it._

_\---_

_I lend myself to mania, and it lends itself to me._

_Shouldering its electricity is easy, it is what—_

Causes him to jump out windows;

Press silver-sharp needles against willing purple veins;

Sleep shackled, because it would be so very easy to do those things while asleep—

Well, he doesn’t let it get that far.

\---

Even so, triangle-shard glass hurts.

Needles sting.

Shackles bruise.

And mania consumes him whole, bit by bit.

\---

_Twenty-four, twenty-four, twenty-four._

And yet he is certain it is not to be.

If his father were Abraham, and not a man whose fingers were deft and sharp as the scalpel he favors, would he have been able to go up to that mountaintop and watch the light fade, like Isaac’s, from those twilight hours, and from his eyes?

He is not Isaac, he knows, but—the shackles and bedframe remind him, those bottles that ground, those needles that offer—he is no less bound.

After all, are his vices not his altar, too?

An altar, then, not of stone, but of linen and soft pillowcases, a mattress that used to be occupied by his mother—

And he has superseded even her, hadn’t he?

Never twenty-four. _Never._

\---

The bars are stainless steel, ubiquitous, unremarkable, but the Persian rug is a nice addition, as is the wall of journals he knows hides that distinctive handwriting, those curves writ with a scalpel-sure hand.

The guards stand silently outside the doors, monitoring the cameras in turns. They know, of course, what goes on behind those bars, on that imported carpet.

He finds he very much does not care.

He understands, _he does_ , that his father needs this every bit as much as he does. _My boy,_ he gasps between jolts of his hips, zinging sharp bursts of pleasure across his skin—

And it is always _my_ boy, _mine—_

Which is how he knows that he is not alone in this obsession: they two that are tangled, they two that belong to each other and each other alone.

 _Never, never, never_ , he thinks, far beyond those steel bars, far beyond the patterns etched into the floor, far beyond dreams and childhoods and memories and cocoa and warrens and regret—

_Never twenty-four._

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment and let me know if you're as obsessed with this dumb show as I am <3


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